


Now We See Each Other

by Loudest_Voice



Series: Fire Emblem: 3H fics [7]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Attempt at UST, Blanket Fic, Dehumanization, Denial, Felix's Nuanced Understanding of Mental Illness, Felix's Version of Hurt/Comfort, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Winter, felix POV, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 20:56:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21288050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loudest_Voice/pseuds/Loudest_Voice
Summary: Dimitri almost feels better. . . but it happens around Felix, who stomps all over that pretty quickly.Or:Feral!Dimitri tries to take care of Felix, and Felix tries to bite his head off.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Series: Fire Emblem: 3H fics [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1512242
Comments: 16
Kudos: 184





	Now We See Each Other

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [luvsanime02](http://archiveofourown.org/users/luvsanime02/pseuds/luvsanime02) for beta reading this, including the mess with Felix's pronouns for Dimitri, which I kept forgetting to be consistent with.

Felix wakes atop a galloping warhorse. It takes him a second to surmise that the situation is - to put it mildly - fucked. Pain stabs up his arm every time the horse's hooves hit the ground. An arrow hit him - it's still sticking out of his bicep, though at least it's not bleeding. He must have hit his head at some point between fighting and ending up on the boar's horse, with said boar riding into a forest and away from the fighting. If they make it out of this mess, Felix will admit to being impressed that the boar can manage to guide a horse through such a thick forest at a considerable gallop. Admit it in the privacy of his own head, that is.

"Let go," hisses Felix. "Just for a second, so I can heal myself."

If anything, the boar's grip around Felix's waist tightens. The horse makes a sharp turn that causes a wave of nausea to crash over Felix. Great. A concussion. That's great. Felix claws at the boar's vambrace, which of course does nothing. Why the beast abandoned the battlefield and where it's headed is anyone's guess. Felix tests the range of motion of his injured arm. Fingers and wrist? Good. Elbow? It pulls the skin around the arrowhead, but he can move it. Shoulder? Same. So the arrow didn't pierce muscle or nerves. 

"Boar!" Felix yells, as loudly as he can muster. "Stop so I can see to my injuries!"

The horse goes on galloping. 

If not for the concussion, Felix would twist around and get himself off the beast - both of them. But he can't hope to overpower the boar even at full strength, much less while dizzy and after having lost fuck only knows how much blood. Where the hell is his sword? Damn it. He can't cast heal on himself while there's wood and metal still _in_ him, not that he has energy left for any magic at all. He briefly considers yanking the arrowhead out, much as he's seen the boar do in the heat of battle, but _he_ isn't a bloodthirsty imbecile. Besides, he can sense that his below-average magic reserves are exhausted. He needs a full night of rest, and perhaps a meal, before he can hope to cast any spells at all. It looks like he has no choice but to wait until the boar reaches its destination or, more likely, exhausts itself. Hopefully, they won't end up somewhere too dangerous.

Most of the roads that connect Garreg Mach's mountains to Charon and the Kingdom have been overrun by bandits since the war started. Felix doesn't remember whose idea it was to round up the pirates and take what little gold or other supplies they might have scrounged from the ailing Kingdom, but he sure hopes it wasn't him. The rogues have nothing to their names. That's why most of them have resorted to assault and murder. Most will not survive the looming, harsh winter. Already, frigid winds blanket even Garreg Mach, prompting soldiers to seek sleeping partners to share body heat. There are not enough blankets or furs to go around. No one has been able to waste wood on fireplaces in a long time.

The boar brings the horse to an abrupt halt, and Felix is too disoriented to figure out where they are. If he dies in his sleep because of the concussion, he bets the boar will eat his corpse, or something else equally fucking awful. 

"Steady yourself," the boar whispers loudly in his ear.

Felix hisses, gripping the edge of the saddle as the boar slides off the horse. The world spins and Felix’s stomach twists on itself. For the first time, real fear snips at his heels. He's seen soldiers with head injuries doze off after waving away healers, insisting their head injuries are minor, then die in a fit of painful convulsions. Not the way Felix wants to go, and certainly not with only the boar for company. He wants to die swiftly, in the heat of battle, even if that will give his father the satisfaction of saying "he died a true knight" solemnly. 

The boar grips Felix's waist and pulls him off the horse while he's daydreaming of his own funeral. Dizziness prompts him to throw his good arm around the boar's shoulders. 

"Get off--" 

The boar rips the arrow out of Felix's bicep. Pain tears through Felix's arm as the metal arrowhead rips through fat and skin. 

Felix vomits at the boar's feet.

"Fuck," says Felix. He feels a rant bubbling up, and then healing magic engulfs him. The wound in his arm heals in a rush of searing heat. A pressure he'd vaguely noted around his head lifts. Paradoxically, the nausea gets worse. He vomits a second time. 

Another wave of healing magic wraps itself around him.

"Stop it, stop it!" Felix pushes away from the boar, heaving. The horse snorts, as if annoyed by the situation, or the stink of Felix's bile. "You know faith magic?"

"Of course," the boar mumbles. "How do you suppose I’ve survived as long as I have?"

"I don't know," admits Felix, which he probably wouldn't if he wasn't disoriented from the _head injury_. Faith magic has never been much good for head stuff, as evidenced by the boar's persisting madness despite diligent care from Faerghus' best healers. "I've never seen you heal yourself."

"Healing is not for the heat of battle," says the boar. 

"That's so stupid," mumbles Felix. The boar is so fucking stupid, and everyone is too busy trying to humor it to see. "We need to go back."

"No," says the boar.

"Save it," says Felix, turning towards the horse.

The boar slides in front of him, its single eye narrowed. "We can't go back yet."

"What?"

"Rats still scurry over all the roads," says the boar. "We can't go back until you've recovered." 

"I'll take my chances," says Felix. "It's either that or start a fire that would attract bandits anyway. Or would you have us freeze to death?"

"No," says the boar, wrapping its giant hand around Felix's forearm. "If you try to fight in your condition, those vermin will kill you."

"I've fought in worse states than this," says Felix. "And we're not so far from Garreg Mach. It should not be so hard to avoid bandits on the way back."

"No."

"That's not your call to make, you stubborn beast!" He tries to wrench away, but the beast's monstrous strength isn't the stuff of legends for nothing.

"Hold still," hisses the boar, tightening its grip on Felix's arm to the point of pain. 

This would be the point where most rational people would try another tactic, but Felix isn't rational when it comes to the boar. His free arm curls into a fist, which the beast catches with an annoyed hum. Felix immediately tries for a kick, but the boar uses its superior size to twist him around, until his back is to the boar's chest and a wrong move will earn him a dislocated shoulder. 

Felix deliberates for a second. A gust of bitingly cold wind sweeps through, misting the air close to his nostrils.

"I will not let you die," says the beast.

If Felix didn't know any better, he would say it sounds _pleading_. 

"If we stay here, we'll freeze," says Felix.

"No, I have a hideout close by," says the boar.

Felix's automatic thought is that the beast is too stupid and bloodthirsty to have hideouts at all, but it has survived alone, while being hunted by the Empire, for five long years. Clearly, it has some capacity for forethought left.

"Alright," says Felix.

The beast lets him go, which is for the best. Felix can admit (in the privacy of his own mind), he has no chance of subduing it unarmed while recovering from a concussion. 

"Come," commands the beast.

Once, that would have been an unnecessarily-polite request, but that person is dead. 

Felix trails behind the beast, refusing to ask to ride the horse despite his bone-deep exhaustion. They are walking into a thicker area of the forest, with trees packed close together and a rising incline. Even a trained warhorse is difficult to maneuver well in such terrain. After about an hour of walking, Felix starts berating himself. The boar is mad, and might be leading them straight into an ambush for all he knows. Felix should have insisted that they turn back and try to rejoin the rest of their army. 

Just before Felix can declare his intention to return, they reach a grotto by the mountainside. It's not obvious that it's there - the entrance is a mere crevasse between two large boulders, hidden by several tree trunks. A thin film of ice glistens over the rocks.

"Here," rumbles the beast. "Only one entrance - narrow. If anyone comes, we will hear them. They will have to come at us one at a time."

Felix nods. They leave the horse untied in case bandits find their hiding spot; it's a trained war beast that won't run off on its own, but it deserves a chance if they get discovered by bandits.

The crevasse is a tight fit even for Felix, and the boar is at least a full head taller and twice as broad. For a ridiculous moment, Felix fears that he'll have to grab the boar's arm and _pull_ it in, but that is mercifully unnecessary. The boar squeezes through, uncaring of any bruises that the rocks might leave behind. A short walkway later, they reach a large cave with gleaming stalagmites. Grunting, the boar walks around Felix and reaches behind one of the larger rocks. 

"Garreg Mach's mountain ranges have many caves," says the boar, producing a torch and lighting it with a short burst of thunder magic. "I've found many while hunting Imperial dogs." 

Felix sucks in a breath as he takes in the hideout. A unit of at least twelve soldiers could feasibly hide here for several days, though the location is not strategically significant since the resistance has taken back the Monastery. The boar has gone as far as squirreling away several lances and a few water flasks, though they all must be frozen solid.

"We will wait here until you've recovered, so we may eliminate any Imperial dogs we run into on the way back to the Monastery," says the boar. "I will start a fire."

_You would stop bathing in your enemies' blood to save me?_ That's too dramatic to say out loud. 

"You know black magic," Felix says instead.

"Not enough for it to be useful in battle," says the boar. "But the lightning has served me outside of it well enough. Rest. We must be on our way as soon as possible."

Felix’s instinct is to argue, as it always is when it comes to the boar, but he's still vaguely nauseous from the concussion. He shuffles over to the largest stalagmite, hisses when he finds it too cold to lean against, and curls in on himself. The boar wanders deeper into the cave, leaving Felix to his muddled thoughts. Five years. Five vicious years on the run from the Empire. Of course the boar would not have survived if it had been permanently overcome by bloodlust. Hidey-holes had obviously been essential, and the boar had been sane enough to find and stock them with essentials. Or what it considered essential: water and weapons.

So it _could_ have come back to its loyal subjects, and simply chosen not to. He - _it_ \- could have come back to Felix. 

Felix hugs his knees to his chest and forces himself to keep his breathing even. Interminable minutes pass while he seethes, heart and head aching miserably. The boar returns with firewood eventually, and wordlessly gets a fire going. It holds one of the stored water flasks to the flames while Felix tries to soak in the heat as much as possible. He can't help but stare at the boar's lone eye on and off, looking for something he no longer has a name for. The boar's animal gaze is fixed on the fire, hardly blinking. 

"I looked for you," says Felix. 

"That's what everyone tells me," says the boar. "No one in the Kingdom, even those who knelt to that treacherous snake, Cornelia, believed me truly dead. You're not special."

"I'm the only one who didn't want to find you," says Felix. Not as they'd found him - a ravening beast clinging to the voices of his dead. 

The boar snorts, lifting the flask to its lips and taking a sip. 

"You’re a beast wearing my dead friend's face."

"Just for a little longer, my old friend," says the boar. "Once I've brought peace for the dead with Edelgard's head, you can do whatever you like with me."

That's delusional nonsense of the highest order, but Felix is too exhausted to argue with it. It's cold, he's hungry and thirsty, and his world had been going straight to hell since Glenn died. Sometimes, Felix just runs out of spite, so when the beast offers him the flask, he takes it. His face twists into a scowl when the still-frigid water slides down his throat. Most of the water is still trapped in a block of ice. He moves to hold the flask over the firewood, but the boar starts putting it out.

"What are you doing?" demands Felix. 

"There's no need to waste the firewood," says the boar.

"Idiot, we'll freeze to death!" 

"No, we won't," says the boar, snuffing out the last of the embers with its boot. "We'll share our furs."

"_What_?" Felix's energy comes back in a rush. "We'll _what_?"

"Share our furs," says the boar, like the problem is that Felix did not hear it. For an insane moment, it's like they're back at the Academy and the boar is pretending (with its wide, beautiful blue eyes) that it has no _idea_ why Felix is being so _rude_ to it. 

"Friends share their furs," says Felix. "We are not friends." Lovers also share their furs, but that doesn't need to be brought up.

"No," says the boar, "people who don't want to freeze to death in an anonymous cave while running from bandits in the middle of winter share their furs." 

"Just start the fire again," says Felix, pleading and hating the entire situation. 

"We don't have enough wood to last all night regardless," says the boar, sighing as it starts peeling off its fur cloak.

The beast isn't wrong. "Fuck me," mumbles Felix. 

"Not while you're in this fragile state."

Felix throws the flask at the boar's face. 

The boar catches it.

"How dare you," hisses Felix. How _dare_ it? To even suggest that in jest, after all it had done. After it had ordered their army on a suicide march against the Empire while their people suffered under Cornelia's rule. After they were all going to fucking _die_ for it, and it didn't even care. "I'll cut your cock off if you bring it anywhere near me."

"That head injury clearly affected you more than I realized if it's turned you into a scandalized virgin," says the boar. "Come, I promise your virtue is safe with me."

Felix stares, still fuming. He wishes he hadn't lost his sword in the last melee, because he knows from experience that he has no chance against the boar unarmed. 

While Felix deliberates the unfairness of this whole mess, the boar lays its furs on the ground.

"Wait," says Felix.

"I have no intention of arguing about this further."

"We should lay mine down," says Felix, starting to unbutton his jacket and trying not to wince as the cave gets even colder, "and use yours as a blanket." 

If the boar is surprised by Felix's sudden change of heart, it does not show it. Instead, it waits for Felix to spread out his jacket on the ground, then lies down flat on it and closes its lone eye. The stupid beast doesn't know what fine ice it's treading on if it's willing to let its guard down in front of Felix. 

"Well, what are you waiting for?" it asks, without opening its eye. 

Felix lays down next to it, trying to avoid physical contact. Which is not exactly possible, as sharing body heat necessitates as much physical contact as possible. The boar throws its fur cloak over them, pulling Felix closer to its broad chest. The thick fur blocks what little light the torch provides, forcing Felix to rely on senses he would much rather ignore. The boar becomes the point of reference for all his surroundings: the firewood is by its side, and beyond it is the entrance to the cave. Its chest is firm, but more forgiving than the ground beneath Felix's jacket. It exudes heat, tempting Felix to burrow closer to its body. Instead of smelling like blood, as it should, the boar smells like _home_.

With a grunt, the boar lays out its arm and guides Felix to use its bicep as a makeshift pillow. Felix struggles between two opposing instincts: biting the boar's jugular and snuggling closer. Its bicep is nicer than the ground, so Felix forces himself to relax. This is hardly the greatest indignity he has suffered since the war started. 

A combination of exhaustion, blood loss, and a poorly-tended head injury lull Felix into a fitful sleep. He barely notices it when he drifts off, so he's not prepared for the dreams that assault him. There are no fantastic horrors, just a subconscious recounting of his worst battles since the war began. Squires being torn apart by javelins. Horses neighing in horror and pain as they are felled by flaming arrows. Human flesh cooking under fire spells. Cold bites at his back, making him huddle closer to Dimitri. Vaguely, he reminds himself that doing such a thing is impossible. Dimitri has been dead for years.

"I'm sorry, Father," Dimitri says, which makes no sense. Why would Dimitri be apologizing to Felix's father? "His strength will serve us against the Empire. This is all in the service of our mission." 

Felix wakes up. The torch has gone out, leaving him in darkness, but it doesn't matter. He remembers where he is. And what is with him, and why it has such a tight hold on him.

"I'm sorry, Father," the boar whispers, close enough that Felix can almost feel the heat of its breath misting over his head. "I will get you Edelgar's head, I promise you I will. If I have to tear through the Empire's army by myself, I'll do it."

"Boar," says Felix. 

"Glenn?"

The rage Felix relies on to keep going does not come. Even people who aren't insane mistake him for Glenn sometimes.

"You should rest," says Felix, ignoring the part of him that recoils at indulging the beast's fantasies. "Sleep brings energy that will serve you well against Edelgard."

The beast's grip loosens, but only slightly. "You're right," it says.

Of course he is, and of course it takes borrowing his dead brother's voice to be taken seriously. 

"Thank you," mumbles the boar.

Felix would cry at its gratitude, but it has been a long time since he’s indulged in tears.


End file.
